locomotion), and the “rational” (memory, imagination, and reason or intellect). But he enlarges significantly a passing suggestion of “the Philosopher” (as he often calls Aristotle) that there are two kinds of intellect. The functions of the first, or “possible intellect,” are understanding, judgment, and reasoning concerning our perceptions; the functions of the second, or “agent intellect,” are to abstract
ideas
or concepts from our perceptions and to know, through faith, those other truths, such as the mystery of the Trinity, that cannot be known through reason.
Aquinas offers no empirical evidence that two distinct intellects exist; his conclusions are based on a combination of logic and doctrine. For whatever in the soul concerns bodily perceptions, sensations, and emotions—whatever is part of the soul-body unit during life—cannot live on after death. But the soul does live on; doctrine says so. It must therefore be that part of the soul-body unit partakes of higher and eternal knowledge and therefore is immortal; this is the agent intellect. 38
Aquinas thus reconciles Aristotelian psychology, which did not allow a personal afterlife, with Christian doctrine, which insisted on it. Yet in making the perishable “possible intellect” the mechanism through which we create ideas, he excludes from his own psychology the mystical Platonic doctrine of innate ideas. He takes his stand with Aristotle that the mind of the infant is a tabula rasa with the power to extract ideas from experience. The doctrine of innate ideas will plague psychology in later centuries, but not through Aquinas’s doing.
He does, however, differentiate between desires rising from the concupiscible appetite and those from the irascible appetite, a dichotomyhe took from Galen, who got it from Plato. Aquinas develops it in more detail than his predecessors, organizing the material by means of definition, deduction, and common sense. His schema: When the concupiscible appetite is aroused by a good thing, we feel such emotions as love, desire, and joy; when repelled by an evil thing, hatred, aversion, and sorrow. When the irascible appetite is aroused by a good thing that is hard to obtain, we feel hope or despair; when by an evil thing, courage, fear, or anger.
This categorization of the emotions, though it may seem artificial and pedantic today, is more systematic and thorough than that of any previous philosopher. More important, Aquinas deserves credit for stressing, almost to a modern degree, that pleasure and pain are the basic substrates of the emotions.
On the subject of the will, Aquinas asserts, as doctrine requires him to, that freedom of the will does exist. But his grounds for saying so are derived from Aristotelian psychology. First he offers abstruse metaphysical reasons for asserting that reason is “more noble and more sublime” in its nature than the will; 39 then, more plainly, he says that reason determines what is good, and the will seeks to gratify the desire for that object. We cannot help desiring the objects of our appetites, and we are free to will what we do about those desires, but the will remains subordinate to intellect, which determines what is to be sought or avoided. (If we will to do something evil, it is through lack of true understanding.) In one case, however, the will is a better judge than reason:
When the desired object is superior to the soul in which its nature is understood by reason, then the will is superior to reason…It is better to love God than merely to know God; and conversely it is better only to understand corporeal things than to love them… Through love we cleave to God, who is transcendently raised above the soul; in this instance the will is superior to the reason. 40
This again exemplifies the reconciliation Aquinas seeks between faith and reason. He aims to use natural reason to prove the truth of the Catholic faith, but mysteries such as the Trinity, the Incarnation,
ideas
or concepts from our perceptions and to know, through faith, those other truths, such as the mystery of the Trinity, that cannot be known through reason.
Aquinas offers no empirical evidence that two distinct intellects exist; his conclusions are based on a combination of logic and doctrine. For whatever in the soul concerns bodily perceptions, sensations, and emotions—whatever is part of the soul-body unit during life—cannot live on after death. But the soul does live on; doctrine says so. It must therefore be that part of the soul-body unit partakes of higher and eternal knowledge and therefore is immortal; this is the agent intellect. 38
Aquinas thus reconciles Aristotelian psychology, which did not allow a personal afterlife, with Christian doctrine, which insisted on it. Yet in making the perishable “possible intellect” the mechanism through which we create ideas, he excludes from his own psychology the mystical Platonic doctrine of innate ideas. He takes his stand with Aristotle that the mind of the infant is a tabula rasa with the power to extract ideas from experience. The doctrine of innate ideas will plague psychology in later centuries, but not through Aquinas’s doing.
He does, however, differentiate between desires rising from the concupiscible appetite and those from the irascible appetite, a dichotomyhe took from Galen, who got it from Plato. Aquinas develops it in more detail than his predecessors, organizing the material by means of definition, deduction, and common sense. His schema: When the concupiscible appetite is aroused by a good thing, we feel such emotions as love, desire, and joy; when repelled by an evil thing, hatred, aversion, and sorrow. When the irascible appetite is aroused by a good thing that is hard to obtain, we feel hope or despair; when by an evil thing, courage, fear, or anger.
This categorization of the emotions, though it may seem artificial and pedantic today, is more systematic and thorough than that of any previous philosopher. More important, Aquinas deserves credit for stressing, almost to a modern degree, that pleasure and pain are the basic substrates of the emotions.
On the subject of the will, Aquinas asserts, as doctrine requires him to, that freedom of the will does exist. But his grounds for saying so are derived from Aristotelian psychology. First he offers abstruse metaphysical reasons for asserting that reason is “more noble and more sublime” in its nature than the will; 39 then, more plainly, he says that reason determines what is good, and the will seeks to gratify the desire for that object. We cannot help desiring the objects of our appetites, and we are free to will what we do about those desires, but the will remains subordinate to intellect, which determines what is to be sought or avoided. (If we will to do something evil, it is through lack of true understanding.) In one case, however, the will is a better judge than reason:
When the desired object is superior to the soul in which its nature is understood by reason, then the will is superior to reason…It is better to love God than merely to know God; and conversely it is better only to understand corporeal things than to love them… Through love we cleave to God, who is transcendently raised above the soul; in this instance the will is superior to the reason. 40
This again exemplifies the reconciliation Aquinas seeks between faith and reason. He aims to use natural reason to prove the truth of the Catholic faith, but mysteries such as the Trinity, the Incarnation,
Similar Books
